Duo and the Spark
by PinkWhirlWind
Summary: Duo gets forced into an assignment that has him working at Walmart. Now who thinks that's a good idea?
1. Chapter 1

Terminal Velocity: Duo and the Spark 1/?

by Max

Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam Wing

Note: The Terminal Velocity Heero and Duo have been on my mind, so this is them, even though it's years earlier.

"Okay." Une said, a smile on lifting her lips that was part Duo-mimicry and part serial killer with the blade already deep between the victim's ribs. "I'm going to take you off suspension, as long as you accept the next mission without complaint and you complete it successfully, without undue violence or property damage."

"Great! Awesome! So me and Heero gonna get this thing done," Duo said, his grin this bright second cousin of the sun, as he chewed up her blade and spit the tip back at her.

"You," Une said, pointing a well-manicured finger at him, "Are going undercover."

"With Heero as my backup, right?"

"No. Heero has a different assignment."

Eating blades for breakfast is very fortifying. Duo's eyes went to a stormy dark twilight color. "What'chu mean?"

"Are you complaining," Une asked, her supply of blades never short.

"Nope," Duo said, lips squishing up, nose a raisin.

"Wonderful! I'm loaning you to Seattle Narcotics. You'll be undercover at a Walmart for six months. Don't get fired. If you get fired, you fail, and I'll have to terminate you from the Preventer's program. Also, you'll be wearing a yellow badge, as you're still a minor."

For a couple seconds, the only sound was Duo trying to breathe through a nose that had twisted up so much as to become an origami raisin.

"Okay. Drug dealers. I can do drug dealers."

"You're there as an inside informant, only. No weapons, no explosives, no acid, not fists, not violence. No one there knows who you really are. Wufei will be your backup."

Duo's head felt like it was going to just float away, like one of those lanterns for the dead, or something. He'd been to a Walmart, several times during the war. Wartime shopping entailed heavy stealth and no money though. Those was good times. Yup. "Wufei's great."

"Wonderful," Une said, Duo's discharge papers already drawn up, just not dated yet. "Have a good time!"

Two weeks later

Duo in his blue vest and running on a breakfast of coffee with a side of coffee and painkillers - like how was it even legal to threaten to fire someone if they sat down? Was that legal? Made the Sweepers look positively luxurious. No beer, no sitting, be nice - fuck MAH life - no shooting anyone, no snark, no buying homeless folk phone chargers that the were clearly shit at stealing.

"Yes, I'd be happy to help," Duo said as the woman at the photo kiosk stared at the screen for another thirty seconds before turning to him.

She took another couple seconds to hold her breath, her eyes sliding up and down him, before she sniffed, sighed, and dealt with her approaching dissatisfaction. "How big is a 4x6?"

Duo blinked, keeping his face relaxed, calm. "It is four inches by six inches."

"Yes, I know that," she said, giving him another sigh like he was an idiot who couldn't speak English properly. Probably from one of the colonies. She touched a fingertip to the inside curve of her manicured eyebrow, "But how big is it?"

Duo stared, one eye drawing down into a squint, "Uh, it's four inches, by six inches, so like one side is four inches long and the other side is six inches long."

Her eyes rolled up to look up at the industrial gray of the ceiling. "I just can't visualize it. Don't you have some... display that shows me how big it is."

Jaw slowly sinking, Duo focused on not letting his lips twist up, don't show any emotion, no emotion, and don't say it's four inches by six inches again, no emotion. Heartburn. Yup, that's heartburn. "Sure."

If one set the charges right, the entire building would go and then there'd be no drug dealers in there. Yup. If done right, there could be beautiful swirling columns of flame. Heero would appreciate the artistry of it. But. He wouldn't appreciate it if he never heard about it, which is what would happen if Duo lost all his clearances and was kicked out of Preventers... and then he might actually have to work at a Walmart.

He fished another customer's photo envelope out, pulled a 4x6 and showed the woman the back of it. "There. This is a 4x6."

"Well, why didn't you do that in the first place?"

Beautiful columns of flame. "Sorry."


	2. Chapter 2

Terminal Velocity: Duo and the Spark 2/?

by Max

Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam Wing.

Being either sixteen or seventeen, Duo felt that he was mature. Maturity had brought with it discomforts that he hadn't had when he was younger. The night before sleep had been little more than a false shadow, evasive and frustrating. So he'd figured get to bed early, take one of those anti-anxiety pills that Dr. Sally and Heero thought would be good or him, get lots of sleep. A couple hours later, he took a couple sleeping pills. Then another hour in, another anxiety pill. Around four hours in, he took one more sleeping pill. A few minutes later he tried a warm shower. Then a while later, he tried another one. In the shower, with the warm water running down his back, he might have slept standing up a bit. With three hours left in his planned sleep schedule, his room mate turned on the blender for a few minutes. Laying there with the blankets up around his ears, violet eyes gleaming into the morning contaminated room, he found that contemplating murder wasn't really helpful for going back to sleep. So then there was a glass of milk and Irish Cream.

The end result was not enough sleep. Yesterday's shirt really didn't care one way or the other. He'd had two showers so he didn't bother with a third, but remembered he hadn't shaved when rolled the big Walmart door. The warm happiness of Duo's morning had worn away by the time he got to the electronics counter. Like how many attendance points did you get for going home early?

Fortunately the day moved right along, in a kind of time warp stupid kinda way, so that it was at once moving very fast and not moving at all at the same time. During a rush, he was ringing up a customer, answering questions about tv streaming devices, when the phone rang.

The week before Loss Prevention had been unhappy that he didn't answer the phone, so he answered the phone. "Thank you for calling Walmart Electronics, my name is Duo. How may I help you."

"I bought a white printer." The woman said, her voice edged with brittle, but not the 'please be kind to me' kind, but more the 'I'm going to cut you and like it kind'.

"Okay," Duo said, pointing the scanner at the next item for the customer in front of him.

"I need a black printer," the woman said, as if that should be completely obvious to anyone breathing.

"Okay," Duo said as he hit card for the payment processing to start.

"DO you have a black printer. It has to be HP. My computer is HP, so I need an HP printer."

Duo mouthed 'Have a nice day,' to the customer who was taking their bag full of probably environmentally harmful products, "Well, actually, it's okay to use any printer with any computer. An HP computer will work with pretty much any printer, but I think I do have a black HP printer. May I place you on hold while I check?"

"And the price. Get the price."

"Of course," Duo said, putting her on hold before running back to check on the printer. It was a whole twenty steps, round trip. "So we do have one. It's $60."

"Well, set it aside for me. I live by the mall. I will be there shortly."

"I'm sure it will be here." So, most people don't buy a $60 printer when it's sitting next to a stack of perfectly fine $19 printers. Most people don't care that much what color the printer is.

"Still. I want you to set it aside for me."

Duo, who was then ringing up another customer, "Sure. Okay. See you when you get here."

So, of course, he forgot.

By the time she walked in, with her white printer in the cart and cloud of fear around her like an overworn mink coat, she rolled up into Electronics. Half bent over her cart, the printer box just a little taller than she was, she met Duo's advance with dark narrowed eyes.

"Hi," he said.

"It's you," she said.

And in that moment of lack of sleep and a bent desperation to be liked, to avoid bullshit that both of them had probably been dodging for years, she knew he hadn't done what he said and he couldn't bear to let her down.

"Let me show you that black printer."

"You were supposed to set it aside for me."

Disappointment seems like such a small little pebble, but it can pull darkness in, like just pull on the nerves and draw in the rain. It's cold and alone. It's hunger and there he stood, staring at this bent little old woman upon whom the rain was about to fall, but not just this over an illogical printer, but who knew how much rain was weighing down the umbrella of hope over her head. He knew what he was running from. He knew how much it would hurt. So he said, "Oh sure! I have yours, but let me show you this one still on the shelf and make sure you like it. If you like it, then you can go return the printer you've got at customer service and I'll have yours on the counter when you get back."

"Where did you put my printer?"

Not having thought his lie out and with a rising horror of actually having lied, he smiled, a little twitchy. "It's in lockup, where we put the valuable things."

"Where?"

"Just over there. See this here nice printer? Do you like it?"

"Where's my printer. I want to see it."

"Well, let me get Ashiro to bring it from the back."

"Okay," she said, her dark eyes turned almost predatory.

Ashiro didn't really respond well to Duo's frantic pleas to please just go get a black HP printer from the back storage. It's not like he didn't have work of his own to do.

So then there was a moment when Duo was hiding behind the shelves, waiting for the woman to leave, so he could bring her printer up.

She wasn't leaving though.

Then there was a manager.

Taller than both Duo and the woman, the manager nodded, sighed, nodded.

And Duo took a deep breath, "Okay, so I'll come clean. I said I'd put it aside, but I got busy and didn't get it done. I'm very sorry."

The woman though had some victory of her own at that point. Her lips, thin and pale, twisted upwards. "Don't tell me. Tell him. He's your manager."

"I'm sorry." And he was. On many levels.

"I don't believe you," she spewed acid. "You're not busy. You can leave now."

The manager nodded kindly and Duo lost a couple of minutes. Then he was standing behind the counter, going through freight, putting stuff away.

"Oh don't take it so hard," Tayla said. "It's all over your face."

Then there were tears. Maybe like the disappointment, they were from many held over bruises, but there tears.

A couple hours later Tayla was still like, "Don't worry! You're not going to get in trouble. If you were, they'd have been here by now."

More tears.

Weak and small and the world was in a million fragments. He'd lied.

Over nothing.

Ashiro was more constructive in his comfort. "At least you know not to lie anymore. I know, you think you can just get away with it, but... Why are you crying?"

Inside he was the God of Death, screaming that he'd kill them all for having seen him. Outside he was like, "That'll be 39 dollars and 42 cents. Have a nice day!"

At lunch, Fatima gave him some of her rice and advised him about a lovely prayer in Arabic that would bring God's help to him. It always worked. It was way to hard for him to say.

After lunch, Ashiro told him that Malin as mad at him. That a friend was now mad at him brought him more tears. He was weak and stupid and unacceptable and he was going to get dismissed from Preventers and Heero was never going to talk to him again.

Ashiro, "Well, just don't lie anymore. It's okay."

To which Duo, with an ashen face and wide violet eyes in a sea of red spat, "It WASN'T like I decided to lie! It's like falling down the stairs. You can't just decide to never fall down the stairs because you never choose to fall down the stairs in the first place."

It was all stupid. Just quit and sit on the beach for a while till it all ends. Nothing will ever work. It's better that way.

Ashiro, "I'll talk to Malin. It'll be okay."

"Sure, okay," Duo said, feeling like that was no more possible than ... well ... anything because nothing was actually possible.

But not much later, Malin showed up in electronics, a big Pacific Islander woman with long hair and a mouth that always told it like it was. Her rough thumb across his cheek, wiping away tears and then her arms around him, lifting him nearly off his feet, so tight and so real, "Duo! I love you. No more tears. I'm not mad. It's okay."

And he understood.

The printer woman had been more important than he was to him. The shitty co-workers at night were more important than he was to him. He was only important if Heero smiled at him and only for that moment and oh shit... this has been a flight of stairs he'd been falling down all his life.

Because Malin said it, it was true.

He was also important.

He

was

also

important.

And everything changed.


End file.
